Daisy Ridley says she had a lack of job offers after Star Wars trilogy ended

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

If you think being a part of one of the biggest film franchises in history guarantees you other work in Hollywood, think again. Daisy Ridley, the face of the new multi-billion dollar STAR WARS trilogy that concluded with THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, is here to you that she was not swimming in job offers when the trilogy ended.

In a recent interview with "Entertainment Weekly" about her new voice role in the time-loop video game Twelve Minutes, Ridley looked back at the months following the release of THE RISE OF SKYWALKER and she admits being in a bit of panic mode when "nothing was coming through" on the job front:

"I was so sad to finish Star Wars. When the film was released, I was like 'Oh my God.' It was such a huge chapter.  And, weirdly, the past few months of nothing much…Obviously it's really nice to be working, but not having much at the time I feel like I processed the last five years. To be forced to slow down, it was good mentally for me because Star Wars was a big thing in my life. Weirdly, at the beginning of the year nothing was coming through. I was like, 'Aww! No one wants to employ me. There were actually loads of things I auditioned for at the beginning of the year and didn't get any of them."

Oddly enough, things began to pick up for Ridley at the end of February and early March, which led to the call about Twelve Minutes. The COVID-19 pandemic then hit and that put a snag in the work momentum but by that point, Ridley used the time to gain perspective about what the STAR WARS journey meant to her and how she can expand on that movie forward.

On top of her voice work in Twelve Minutes, Ridley has a few other voice parts on here plate, including Baba Yaga, an animated interactive film for the virtual-reality Oculus Quest platform that features Jennifer Hudson, Kate Winslet, and Glenn Close. Ridley will then lend her vocal talents to an original Audible series called Islanders, from playwright Elinor Cook.

Scripts for other potential projects have fallen into her lap during London's pandemic-prompted quarantine and she says "There have been awesome things" but due to the pandemic she says "and obviously no one knows when they're gonna go." As for what she'll get to do next, she hints that it's going to be really dark:

"There's one thing that I'm gonna do that's super f***ing dark. I was like, 'Do we need something this dark?' But it's also really interesting and about memory and everything's a bit fragmented. I definitely feel like what I wanna watch and I guess be a part of is something with some joy. That's what people need."

I actually think Daisy Ridley is quite talented and should be pulling in film roles but I think sometimes STAR WARS is such a behemoth that a good performance in one of those films can get lost in all the spectacle. I'm sure Ridley will be fine but once that STAR WARS train came to a stop, it had to be daunting for all the newbies involved in the new trilogy to think about what they would be doing next.

Do YOU think Daisy Ridley should be pulling in more offers?